By Your Side
by amor-remanet
Summary: Derek takes Spencer home once he's released from the hospital.


"Derek, I already told you: I'm fine."

"Well, excuse me, Pretty Boy; I got a little distracted by the fact that you're on crutches."

Spencer wishes that he could turn on his heel and glare at Derek that way — but the other man has a point: getting shot in the kneecap has left Spencer on crutches for some indefinite period of time, and that means that, in order to face his friend, Spencer has to balance himself just so, turning around and placing his crutches a little bit too awkwardly, just so he doesn't go toppling down the steps into his apartment building and exacerbate things. He teeters, as he does so, and his one good leg wobbles beneath him — Spencer flinches, wrinkling up his nose and silently hoping that he figured out the math of this procedure right. The mental gymnastics seemed easy enough, but he couldn't write his figures down and double check them. Being a genius won't save him from a trip back to the emergency room, from possibly more surgery, and from having to be in Saint Sebastian's again, dragging the team's attention away from Hotch, who actually needs it, after what Foyet did to him, after he had to put Jack and Haley into protective services.

"See?" he points out, shrugging as if this drives his point home further. "I can still move, I can still turn around and do everything in an only slightly reduced capacity than normal. I'm fine, and… thank you for driving me home, but you don't need to follow me up to my place. I won't have any trouble getting there.

Derek rolls his eyes and asks, "Would you at least go up the ramp instead of the stairs?"

"The stairs are more direct. Granted, they're a little more difficult than the slight grade on the ramp, but they ultimately mean spending less up and about when I should be resting my knee and letting it recover."

Shaking his head in that pensive way of his, the one that means he's turning over every piece of logic Spencer's thrown at him, trying to find the holes that he can poke, Derek sighs. "Look, Rossi told me to make sure that you get home safe and settled in — and that, to me, sounds like I need to follow you up. …I won't stay long, if you don't want me to, but I need to at least get you up there. …You know, in a year of sleeping with you, it's always been at my place, and if there's any good reason for me to finally see yours? It's to make sure that you're okay now."

A pang shoots up Spencer's back from his arms; his bad knee throbs, reminding him of the ache that he'd mostly shoved out of his conscious mind, and the crutches dig into his muscles, and the need to just go sit down suddenly becomes more pressing. With a short nod, he awkwardly hops with his crutches to turn himself around and makes his way up the four other steps. As they ride the elevator up to floor fifteen, he tries to ignore the way his heart beats faster, and the anxious thoughts that go racing through his head — the unfilled prescription in his pocket doesn't really rub at his skin like a razor, he knows this, and it doesn't weigh him down… but the fact that it's for Vicodin does make his breath hitch in his throat, enough so that, as the elevator slows to a stop, Derek puts a hand between his shoulder-blades.

"Pretty Boy?" he whispers.

"It's all right," Spencer lies, too thankful when the doors slide open. "Come on."

He leads Derek down the hall to 15H, and trying not to focus on what Derek could have to say about his place, and its condition — there might be the standing rule against inter-team profiling, but the extenuating circumstance of a romantic/sexual entanglement could, potentially, overrule that. But Derek won't go home until he's seen Spencer in, and so he turns the key in the lock, turns the doorknob, lets them in — and he doesn't hold his breath or over-think Derek's reactions because everything's a mess. Aside from Spencer's desk, which exists in a permanently untamed state of what Mom calls "creative disorder" (covered in papers and notebooks and loose books, none of which ever lend themselves to staying in place), Spencer has kept his home clean with meticulous precision — the carefully arranged bookshelf (separated into genres, alphabetized by author's last name and the first word of the title, excluding 'A' and 'THE'), the kitchen that even June Cleaver

Unfortunately, the desk is where Derek wanders first. Spencer eases himself into the armchair, while Derek looks through everything — the letters from Gideon that Spencer's never mentioned to anyone, the ones from Ethan full of experience and advice on staying clean, the periodic updates from the doctors on Nathan Harris' and Adam Jackson's conditions and recoveries… Then, as if he's read Spencer's mind, Derek says, "Spencer. It's not back-sliding if you need the medication."

Spencer shakes his head and mutters, "Just stay with me tonight?" Derek kneels by the chair, and leans in to kiss him.


End file.
